


gotta learn to be a wiser fool

by piggy09



Series: Keyframes [5]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-05-13 19:48:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5714956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Sarah’s my sister,” she says. “We are twins.” She wants to tell someone. She wants to tell <i>everyone</i>. She wants Sarah to come outside and wash up these cuts on Helena’s skin with cold water and tell Helena stories of her childhood. She wants to cut Sarah open and choke her with her own guts so no one else can ever have her. She wants to lie out here in the grass and sleep. She’s tired.</p><p>(Helena, between the scene in Siobhan's basement and the scene in Beth's apartment in the Season 1 finale.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	gotta learn to be a wiser fool

**Author's Note:**

> [warnings: mentions of selfharm, violence, incest overtones, suicide mention]

The glass cuts Helena’s skin as she climbs out the window and the wings on Helena’s back ache as she falls to the ground and her skin is screaming and she’s bleeding and Sarah is her sister. Somehow, these things are all the same thing – the blood she’s dripping into the bushes outside of this house is Sarah’s blood, and she and Sarah were meant to be together forever and ever amen. She lies there curled in the bushes for a moment, feeling her wrists ache from the zip ties she broke, and she says it out loud.

“Sarah’s my sister,” she tells the dark. The dark doesn’t answer her. It’s very good at that, that silence. The distant lights from the pig-police flash on Helena’s face red, blue, red, blue. She holds her hand up and blots out the stars with it, watches her fingers light up red, blue, red, blue. She holds up her other hand and pushes her fingers together. “Sarah’s my sister,” she says. “We are twins.” She wants to tell someone. She wants to tell _everyone_. She wants Sarah to come outside and wash up these cuts on Helena’s skin with cold water and tell Helena stories of her childhood. She wants to cut Sarah open and choke her with her own guts so no one else can ever have her. She wants to lie out here in the grass and sleep. She’s tired.

But she has a _mission_. She has a _game_ to play. So Helena heaves herself up to standing, wobbles a bit in the grass. Red, blue, red, blue, sirens wailing in the dark. Helena forces her body to walk a step. Then another step. Then she’s walking just fine, and barely bleeding at all. She whistles to herself as she tramps through the bushes, quietly enough that she can tuck it under the siren-sound. For a second she pretends the police have come to take her – their – to take their – ugh, she can’t do it. The womb. The womb that was Amelia, false and aching. _You were born of science_ , Sarah (who is Helena’s sister!) (her sister! Helena’s sister! Helena’s only sister!) (and Helena Sarah’s only sister!) said, leaning in close enough for Helena to smell her. (Sour and unwashed, like leather and running and the stink of Helena’s fear-sweat from the cage. Helena loves her! If she licked Sarah’s face, it would taste just the same as her own. She wonders how long it’s been since Sarah brushed her teeth.) _Not of some immaculate womb_.

Not of some immaculate womb not of some immaculate womb Helena gags, feels like washing. The womb she came from is dirty dirty, not immaculate at all. The womb she came from gave her up, and it’s _unfair_ that she-and-Sarah (sisters) have this _thing_ tying them together. It’s not right. The connection they have is strong and _real_ and – and – and – and—

Helena keeps – picturing it, maybe, in the safe dark space in the back of her head where she tucks away things she likes and wants to keep safe. (Book-scrapping, maybe? She doesn’t know the English word but she saw it once, a mother at a kitchen table clipping away pictures to put in a pretty book. Helena’s sure the book is clean, with little flowers on it. Nothing bad could ever be in a book like that.) A window full of cupcakes she saw at a bakery, the small smile a child gave her, the food the nuns would eat on holidays that she could eat scraps of, a commercial she saw with white picket fences and a family that laughed and smiled. In that space she and Sarah are walking through a crowd, and Sarah keeps saying _this is Helena, she’s my sister_. But before Helena can reach for Sarah’s hand Amelia comes between them like a big grey cloud, says: _my daughters_. And Helena doesn’t want to be anyone’s _my_ — but Sarah’s.

So. A game, then. Helena already knows all the rules, knows the board and everything. It will be a good game; she’ll cut out this bad thing from their lives and then Sarah will say _oh, Helena, this is so much better. Thank you, Helena, for saving us._

(Us us us us us us us us us us us us us us _sisters_ )

(They were born from the same _womb_ )

(They’re the _same_ )

(They were _meant to be together_ and now they _are_ and miracles exist, Helena knows, because the person she was born to spend her whole life with is here and so close Helena could almost taste her. Helena just has to play this one game, just has to do this one thing, and then she can – hm. Be with Sarah? Kill Sarah too? Kill herself? Whatever comes after the killing of Amelia. It will be something big, she knows. Her whole body is screaming with love. Maybe she’ll hug Sarah. Maybe she’ll choke her to death.)

Helena swipes her tongue around her mouth, tasting the sourness tucked into her gums. “Oh, Helena,” she murmurs to herself, “thank you for saving us.”

“Of _course_ , Sarah,” she whispers. “We are sisters. I will keep you safe.”

She’s on the road, now, and she misses her jacket because the cold outside is like a piece of metal stabbed in her stomach. She makes her way down the street, cuts to another street, works her way through alleys and roads to where she is going.

(Words are tricky, sometimes, and people are tricky too; roads and maps and numbers Helena understands. Putting together pieces of guns Helena understands. Puzzles Helena understands. It’s all just grids and numbers and pieces you click together. If Sarah had streets for veins, Helena would know how best to tell her that she loves her. If Sarah had lampposts for eyes, Helena wouldn’t want to kill her at all.)

She stops when she reaches the locker. Maggie’s locker. Dead Maggie’s locker. Maggie wasn’t a womb, wasn’t the womb Helena was born from, but Maggie loved her anyways. Maggie was a much better mother than this _thing_ that is trying to pretend it cares for her. And it’s fine, it’s alright, it can lie to her. She is strong enough to know that Amelia is _lying_. It’s Sarah who she has to protect.

Helena opens up the door to the locker, creeps inside. It’s so very dark, and Maggie is dead. Helena was supposed to protect Maggie from liars and now Maggie is dead. The air still smells like her perfume, like flowers. Helena breathes in deep through her nose and pushes that to the back of her mind with cupcakes and the way children smile (like their teeth are sugar cubes) (like nothing has ever hurt them) (Helena would do anything to make a child smile at her like that, would burn buildings down, would rip out someone else’s teeth one by one by one). She hums to herself and rummages through the crates. In the back of her mind a clock is ticking. How much time have the oinking officers given her? She is really very lucky they came – they will put Sarah in a nice cage where she can wait for Helena to come and save her, and they will snuffle and snort around Amelia for long enough for Helena to make the game nice and neat. She wouldn’t be grateful to police for anything ( _She’s a cop_ , Maggie said, and Helena looked at the photo and thought _I do not like “cops”_ with a strong and certain anger), but she at least considers it and that is gift enough.

In one of the boxes is a wig – with a pair of glasses and a tube of lipstick and a pair of shoes with high heels and clothing that smells like it’s been left behind. Helena only grabs the wig, pulls her shining angel hair under it with practice born of being thrown in the dark with just the wig. They were preparing her, Maggie-and-Tomas. They were helping her. For this. Her last and favorite mission.

When she leaves, she looks like Sarah. (Probably. She doesn’t have a mirror, in the locker.) The thought makes her squirm a little bit in delight, makes her feel warm. It’s enough to cover the chill of leaving the locker behind again. It’s the closest Helena could get to a grave, for Maggie. She can’t tear it apart like she wants to. The police took Maggie’s apartment and the police ate Maggie’s body right up but at least the police will never find this. No pigs will ever get to Maggie’s tomb unless Helena leads them there.

Her journey away from the locker is faster. She’s scared she’s wasting time. Run, run, run, watch the rising of the sun. Her hair falls around her shoulders differently, strange but not unpleasant. Maybe she’ll give up being an angel, for Sarah. Let her hair grow out until they match and no one can tell them apart. (No one. No one. No one.)

The row of buildings looms in front of her, just the same as it was the last time Helena was here – feels like years ago, when she didn’t know Sarah’s name, when this woman was just not-Beth instead of the north of Helena’s compass heart. She slips in through the back door – just the same as last time – and then is in Elizabeth-Childs’ apartment. She turns on the light switch and stands in the room.

Sarah, she thinks, was here. Sarah lived here, tucked inside of Beth’s life like a parasite. Sarah was so good at being Beth that she tricked everyone, Beth’s pig partner and everyone in that insect hive of a police station. She imagines being Sarah, walking into this place – picking apart the pieces of it to find something that she could use. She imagines Sarah rifling through Beth’s fridge, the long lean line of her throat as she swallowed something from a bottle. Imagines the way her words softened and warped in her mouth.

Helena peels off her hoodie, holds it by the neck as she walks in soft steps through the apartment. It’s sticky with blood, still. There’s a long tear in it from where the window glass cut through, a tear that matches a long scratch on Helena’s skin. It’s stopped bleeding. Helena stops bleeding quickly; she used to think it was God protecting her, but now she doesn’t know. She turns on lights as she goes, brings Beth’s apartment back to life in a way she would never do for Beth. Sarah was here. Sarah slept in that bed, Sarah ate at that table that Helena pretended to eat at. Helena’s _sister_. Here, in this place.

Helena talks to herself as she walks through the apartment, a stream of conversation – the kind you’d have if you were pressed up against someone in the womb, eye to eye, hip to hip, bone to skin to bone. A monologue with no audience. She’s trying to trick her tongue into becoming Sarah’s tongue – trying to find Sarah’s syl-la-bles in her mouth, the way they’d taste like smoke and like mirrors.

“Meat-head,” she mutters to herself, stepping into the bedroom. “Mm. Bloody-hell.” She can’t quite get it right; Helena blows a gust of wind through her lips, sending them flapping. Into the closet, where she rifles through the drawers on the side of the closet that isn’t Paul’s. Beth’s side. Sarah’s side.

There’s a backpack on the floor, under a pile of clothes – Helena recognizes the trench coat Sarah wore when she was not-Beth, wonders if it still has flecks of Helena’s blood on it. But it’s the backpack she’s interested in. When she opens it she breathes in deep, but: she can’t smell Sarah at all. The backpack is filled with clothing, packed in tight and neat, more clothing than Helena has ever owned in her entire life. This _is_ Sarah’s life, probably – this is the small pile of Sarah-things that Sarah hid under all of that Beth-life. In a way, Helena’s holding Sarah’s heart in her hands.

She dumps it out on the floor.

It’s a pile of dark and leather, which is the way Helena thinks of Sarah: standing in the dark, illuminated by some light that picks out all the shining strands of her hair. Sarah, dark in the dark, shining in the dark, a light in the dark, a dark to match the light. Helena settles onto her haunches, rocks back and forth a little in her pile of Sarah’s shed skins. She picks up a tank top and smells it. Smells like – mm – sweat. Whiskey. Sex. Helena huffs out a sharp breath through her nose, throws it back. She doesn’t have time for that anyways, does she? She can’t have _much_ time. Amelia is headed here to meet Sarah, not a bleeding Helena with Sarah’s hair. So she peels off her tank top in one easy motion, grabs the tank top she’d thrown to the ground (she’s changed her mind, she’s changed her mind) (she’s sorry she threw it away) and slides that on instead. Imagines: being Sarah. Imagines being brave, and strong, and unafraid. Imagines being so full of love that it blinds her to who would and wouldn’t hurt her.

Well, the last part she doesn’t have to imagine. She lets her hand slide under her tank top, trails her fingers lightly against the angry snarl of scar tissue. Sighs, again.

“I’m doing this for you,” she tells the walls, her voice strained somewhere between her own sounds and Sarah’s. A cord that connects them, right there between her teeth.

“I love you,” she says.

She can’t quite get the sound right. But that’s alright. She has plenty of time to practice.

**Author's Note:**

> Baby I need a friend  
> but I'm a vampire smile, you'll meet a sticky end  
> I'm here trying not to bite your neck  
> but it's beautiful and I'm gonna get
> 
> so drunk on you and kill your friends.  
> You'll need me and we can be obsessed  
> And I can touch your hair and taste your skin  
> the ghosts won't matter 'cause we'll hide in sin
> 
> [...]
> 
> Baby you're cruel to me  
> but you see I love it when you make me bleed  
> I want a scar that looks just like you  
> 'till then I gotta learn to be a wiser fool  
> \--"Vampire Smile," Kyla La Grange
> 
> This song is pretty hecked up, but: Season 1 Helena is pretty hecked up, so I'm allowing it. Thanks for reading! Please kudos/comment if you enjoyed! :D


End file.
